Best known for creating the glass pyramid at the Louvre museum in Paris, Ieoh Ming Pei is a role model to many architects and designers, as he is to David Adjaje (on the honors committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects) who nominated him for the award: "I remember as a young student first visiting the Louvre in Paris and marvelling at its extraordinary ability to unify and modernise what was a much loved but disparate institution, and beholding its magnificent, gravity defying, glass pyramid," he said, following the RIBA's decision announced October 6.

And RIBA president Ruth Reed added: "A list of his influences and those he has influenced reads like a roll-call of the modern movement. Seldom has such a reward been so overdue or so just."

Pei, whose more than 170 completed projects also include the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, will receive the medal from England's Queen Elizabeth II at the official award ceremony held in London next February.